Nature bites back

This themed edition on environmental ethics was commissioned a long time before reports first began to emerge from China about an epidemic of a previously unknown viral infection. By the summer of 2020, the whole world is grappling with the devastation that the Covid-19 disease complex is still wreaking at the time of publication now, let alone the death toll and economic collapse it has already left in its first wave. Covid-19 and environmental exploitation are two major global threats. Covid-19 has been taken seriously because it kills quickly; climate change is still being ignored by many but may yet kill far greater numbers.

I am then more indebted than usual to our guest editor, Prof Cristina Richie, for bringing together this fascinating and yet troubling collection of papers, which I hope will help increase awareness of how important health care is in raising the profile of climate change on the bioethical agenda. In my first decade of being Editor in Chief, I have never known an edition to come together under such pressure and yet with such determination. I hope it will provoke change in actions as well as in the thinking of our readers. Who knows where we will be with either Covid or climate trends by the next issue? Whatever, this edition contributes to making both situations that little bit less dangerous.